Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday March 3

• Consolidation in the colocation business: NTT buys German data center operator, while Rackspace seeks tie-ups with Amazon, Microsoft: NTT: Japan's NTT Communications Corp said on Tuesday it has agreed to buy German data center firm e-shelter, becoming Europe's third biggest operator in the sector, in the latest in a series of overseas acquisitions to counter sluggish growth at home. NTT Communications, an unlisted division of Japanese telecom firm Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) (9432.T) didn't disclose the deal's financial terms. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this month the NTT unit was in talks to buy e-shelter for about 100 billion yen ($832 million). In a joint statement, NTT Communications and e-shelter said the Japanese firm will acquire 86.7 percent of the German company, founded in 2000. Operating data centers in four major cities in Germany including Berlin, as well as in Zurich and Vienna, e-shelter is Germany's biggest provider of data center services, they said. The European deal stretches the NTT brand further across the globe. In 2010, parent NTT bought South Africa's Dimension Data for 382 billion yen, while in 2013 NTT Communications signed deals with a combined value of 85.5 billion yen to take over two U.S. cloud computing firms, Virtela Technology Services and RagingWire Data Centers. Rackspace Rackspace Hosting Inc. is open to forging partnerships with large cloud-computing operators such as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as the company seeks to bolster slowing revenue growth. Rackspace, which has faced price cuts by Amazon, Microsoft and other competitors, decided in September to reject approaches by multiple groups interested in a partnership or acquisition. Since then, Rhodes hinted that the company has had a team looking at supporting customers who are renting computing services from other providers. Rhodes confirmed on Monday that Rackspace intends to provide third-party support for users of rival cloud-computing services via a combination of people and custom-management software. “There are future versions of our model that will be more capital light and more service oriented,” Rhodes said.

• Dating app Tinder launches slew of product features, dynamic pricing: Tinder’s “Rewind” functionality just went live, finally giving users the ability to go back in time and swipe right instead of left. The “Rewind” feature is included in the premium tier of the service, Tinder Plus, which was unveiled today and costs anywhere between $9.99 and $19.99 in the United States, depending on the age of the user. That’s right. Tinder Plus costs $19.99 for users older than 30, while it costs just $9.99 for folks who are younger than 30. However, in the TechCrunch office we’ve seen Tinder Plus offered at the price of $14.99/month for a 30+ female user. We’ve reached out to Tinder to get a clearer picture of the Tinder Plus pricing structure and will update as soon as we know more. For now, however, we do know that pricing not only ranges based on age but by location. Users in emerging countries (Tinder is currently available in 140 countries across the globe) will pay as little as $2.99/month, while users older than 28 in developed markets like the UK will be paying approximately $23/month (and nearly 4x as much as their over 28-year-old counterparts). Tinder has been testing pricing in various markets for the past few months, but even without the complete information, it’s easy to get an idea of the general landscape here. Older users, who theoretically have less supply and offer less demand, should pay a greater amount for extra dating tools. Plus, they likely make more money than younger users. It’s Uber’s Surge pricing model applied to romantic endeavors. Tinder Plus also includes Passport, which allows users to search for matches anywhere in the world through the drop of a pin, as opposed to being locked into your current location. Tinder Plus also allows users to buy themselves out of advertisements, though Tinder has yet to launch any ad products just yet. Sources say that the ad product will launch later this month, but it’s unclear what exactly those ads will look like. As for the features launching today, they make a lot of sense given the current user behavior on Tinder. Rewind, in particular, appeals to just about anyone who has swiped left when they meant to swipe right. The company has seen over 6 billion matches in total, though it’s hard to say how many of those matches become anything. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for Tinder. The point is that it has become an addiction, with people mindlessly flipping through potential suitors and swiping based on a gut reaction.

• India’s Mobile Carriers Head Into $14 Billion Fight for Survival: What happens when a wireless operator with millions of customers loses the airwaves it needs to provide service? We may soon find out thanks to an unusual government auction taking place in India. The government will open the bidding Wednesday for airwaves already in use by the biggest carriers, including Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Vodafone Group Plc. They’ll have to compete to keep their licenses in the auction against Mukesh Ambani, who is India’s richest man and has signaled his determination by making the largest deposit of the competition. India’s approach, which is unlike what happens in the U.S., could mean seismic change for the world’s second-largest smartphone market. The airwaves up for auction serve more than 300 million customers and account for almost half of the $19 billion in combined revenue for the four largest operators. “For some of the telcos, renewal of spectrum is a key for survival,” said Nitin Soni, a director at Fitch Ratings in Singapore. Bharti, India’s biggest carrier, and second-ranked Vodafone could each spend as much as $4.5 billion for the spectrum, Soni said. Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. submitted a 45 billion-rupee ($726 million) bank guarantee, the most of any carrier, to participate in the auction, according to data from Mjunction Services Ltd., which is running the sale. Bharti Airtel was second with 43 billion rupees, and Vodafone gave a guarantee of 37 billion rupees. Any company losing previously held airwaves will probably have to shut down business in that region and abandon any investments or infrastructure it’s made. Companies also will lose revenue if they can’t switch to other bands, a move that would probably require new towers or technology. If companies shut down their business in a particular circle, their subscribers will have to look for new cellular operators, said Rishi Tejpal, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in New Delhi. “For some operators, it’s a do-or-die situation,” Tejpal said. “And with Reliance Jio in the picture, nobody knows their strategy.”

• It’s official #1: Google says it wants to offer cellular service: A top Google exec has confirmed what many have been speculating for months: That the search giant wants to start offering wireless service. Google isn't necessarily looking to become the next Verizon and AT&T, said Sundar Pichai, Google's head of Android, at the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. But, according to various news reports, Pichai said we'll begin to see more details trickle out in the next few months as Google announces partnerships with wireless carriers and other businesses. Analysts say Google is likely to partner with firms such as T-Mobile and Sprint rather than build its own network from scratch. Asked whether Google's aim was to drive wireless prices down for consumers, Pichai responded that the experiment's goal is to showcase new mobile innovations, according to the Verge. An example: Technology that can automatically reconnect dropped calls. But by adding wireless service to its very long chain of mobile offerings, Google would be showcasing something nobody else has tried: A totally unified cellular experience that's entirely within the Google ecosystem. Google already sells a combination of hardware and software with its line of Nexus phones. Now, Google's wireless service — combined with a Google handset, the Android operating system, the Google app store and Google's own mapping, search and e-mail apps — stands to create a formidable vertical silo that goes far beyond the Nexus experiment.

• Its official #2: Olacabs acquires TaxiForSure for $200M in cash and stock: Online cab booking service Olacabs.com run by Mumbai-based ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, has acquired Bangalore-based Serendipity Infolabs Pvt Ltd, which runs rival service TaxiForSure for $200 million (Rs 1,240 crore) in a cash and stock deal, as per a company statement. The breakup of the cash component of the deal could not be immediately ascertained but with the stock swap, TaxiForSure investors—Accel Partners, Helion Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Blume Ventures would get small minority equity stakes in Ola. Ola’s backers include SoftBank, Tiger Global, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital and Steadview Capital. Ola is already the top player in its business and TaxiForSure is believed to be among the other large firms in its space. Both are locked in a pitched battle against global giant Uber and other local players such as hybrid venture Meru. The company said TaxiForSure will continue to operate as a separate entity, at least for now, with Arvind Singhal (currently COO) being appointed CEO. Aprameya Radhakrishna and Raghunandan G, co-founders of TaxiForSure, will contribute in an advisory role for a certain period. This is the second largest deal in the consumer internet/e-commerce business behind Flipkart’s acquisition of Myntra last year. That deal was reportedly worth over $300 million. TaxiForSure is currently present in 47 cities with over 15,000 vehicles registered on its platform. Ola said the deal compliments the two companies, as TaxiForSure follows a different model of supply and distribution by working with cab operators compared to Ola’s model of working with drivers who own their own cabs.

• Alibaba and top Chinese university launch new education portal for MOOCs: One of China’s most highly regarded universities has partnered with the country’s biggest ecommerce company to create a new website for massive open online courses, or MOOCs. The generically named Chinese MOOCs was just launched by Peking University and Alibaba as schools around the country begin their new semesters following the Chinese New Year holiday (h/t to TechNode). Chinese MOOCs lists 26 courses, covering subjects in science, law, literature, music, and IT. The website lists six other universities that are apparently on board, including the University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, and Beijing Normal, but all the courses currently offered are from Peking University (note: Peking University is also known as Beijing University, or Beida, for short). Using a model similar to Coursera, Chinese MOOCs combines video lectures, quizzes, and other coursework to educate students, who can take courses for free and opt to pay for certificates upon completion. There’s no limit to the number of students per course.

• U.S. millennials post ‘abysmal’ scores in tech skills test, lag behind foreign peers: The test is called the PIAAC test. It was developed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, better known as the OECD. The test was meant to assess adult skill levels. It was administered worldwide to people ages 16 to 65. The results came out two years ago and barely caused a ripple. But recently ETS went back and delved into the data to look at how millennials did as a group. After all, they’re the future – and, in America, they're poised to claim the title of largest generation from the baby boomers. U.S. millennials, defined as people 16 to 34 years old, were supposed to be different. They’re digital natives. They get it. High achievement is part of their makeup. But the ETS study found signs of trouble, with its authors warning that the nation was at a crossroads: “We can decide to accept the current levels of mediocrity and inequality or we can decide to address the skills challenge head on.” The challenge is that, in literacy, U.S. millennials scored higher than only three countries. In math, Americans ranked last. In technical problem-saving, they were second from the bottom. But surely America’s brightest were on top? Nope. U.S. millennials with master’s degrees and doctorates did better than their peers in only three countries, Ireland, Poland and Spain. Those in Finland, Sweden and Japan seemed to be on a different planet Top-scoring U.S. millennials – the 90th percentile on the PIAAC test – were at the bottom internationally, ranking higher only than their peers in Spain. The bottom percentile (10th percentile) also lagged behind their peers. And the gap between America’s best and worst was greater than the gap in 14 other countries. This, the study authors said, signaled America’s high degree of inequality. The study called into question America’s educational credentialing system. While few American test-takers lacked a high school degree, the United States didn’t perform any better than countries with relatively high rates of failing to finish high school. And our college graduates didn’t perform well, either. “Abysmal,” noted ETS researcher Madeline Goodman. “There was just no place where we performed well.”